Penguin & Unnatural Links Recovery

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

First Off... Who Am I?

Co-author: The Art of SEO President: Stone Temple Consulting,

25+ person SEO and PPC firm Trainer: Instant E-Training Founder: Web Site Publishing

Companies Publish > Grow > $ell Two significant sites exit thus far

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Penguin Drove Traffic Drops

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Beware of Unnatural Links

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Beware of Unnatural Links

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Panda/Penguin Algorithm Structure

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Article Directories

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Directories, forum posts, bookmarks, …

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Guest Post Spam

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Does Your Anchor Text Look Like This?

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Or, Like This?

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Sample Link Profile

Links: 1,273,452 Linking Domains: 11,897

How do I get started?

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Start by Categorizing

For example: Blogs Pages with multiple links Sites with more than one linking page Rich anchor text links Links from comments Links from the same “C” block NoFollow’ed Links

Speeds analysis and clean up Example: 1M links vs. 10,000 linking domains

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Criteria“Would you have invested time to get this link if Google did not exist?”

“Would you proudly show this to a prospective customer pre-sale?”

“Would you show it to your children?”

“Did the person giving you the link mean it as a genuine endorsement?”

“If argue it that it’s a good link, It’s NOT.”

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

And, Now the Big One

You must look at every single linking domain!

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Reconsideration Guidelines

Be very thorough in your cleanup first! Don’t waste their time

Be respectful! Don’t whine or talk about what you lost Be short and to the point

Nature of problem (stats are good) What you did to clean it up

Clearly state that you intend to abide by Webmaster Guidelines going forward

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Unnatural Links Messages (V1)

Worth filing a request here too Same general guidelines If you can’t get totally cleaned up quickly:

Consider sending a reconsideration request in to buy time Show significant progress Show commitment to totally clean it up

May give you more time before they act YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

How STC Can Help

SpamLink Detective automates categorization Experienced resources to lead the effort

We can do 100% of the work … … or coordinate your internal resources

Extensive link clean up experience 4 recent projects with sites with over 1M links

3 had actual penalties 1 had the unnatural links (V1) message

Dozens of other clean up projects 100% recovery success rate

@stonetemple / + Eric Enge

Thank You!

Eric Engeeenge@stonetemple.com@stonetemple+ Eric Enge(508) 485-7751www.stonetemple.com